


Memory Stored Elsewhere

by FriendshipCastle



Series: Spookums Radio Anthology [6]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Canon Compliant, Eyepocalypse, M/M, Spoilers, god this is friggin tender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26768428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendshipCastle/pseuds/FriendshipCastle
Summary: Martin imparts some good nice memories, but he refuses to make it a statement. Jon is very in love and very bad at guessing.This is set immediately after the tape clicks off at the end of ep 181, so spoilers for everything up to that point.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Spookums Radio Anthology [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772725
Comments: 4
Kudos: 131





	Memory Stored Elsewhere

Jon frowned down at the muck slowly making its way up his legs again. His jeans had been clean when they started out from Mikaele Salesa’s bubble of safety. The strange gunk of the apocalyptic world was reclaiming him. The gaze of the sky beat down like oppressive heat, but the winds tearing around the two of them were chilling and humid like breath. It evened out into clammy discomfort. And yet, Jon could feel a bounce in his steps, even as the mud sucked at his feet. He had Knowledge, he could See, he knew where he was and what was nearby and where he was going again. It felt good to have purpose and feel the awful hum of the world around him.

None of this was a good sign.

“It’s getting in my shoes,” Jon said, just to make a bit of conversation. He’d rather killed it when he admitted he couldn’t remember what had happened in Salesa’s house. The silence between himself and Martin had been grim for a while now (though time, once again, didn’t mean anything).

“Yeah,” Martin said. After a moment, he added, “Yuck.” as an afterthought.

“What are you—? Uh, you’re a bit distracted,” Jon said, correcting himself now that his compulsion powers would work. He’d have to watch out for that again.

“Mm,” Martin said.

“…Penny for your thoughts?”

Martin looked over at him. There was a faint wrinkle between his brows. His hair looked different. It was even longer than usual and had more curl to it, though strands were plastered to his forehead. He’d been clean, that was the difference. Now he brushed his rapidly-tangling hair out from behind his glasses and said, “You can’t hold on to any good memories?”

Jon blinked. “Well, I remember having a, a… I was happy before the world ended. Very happy, with you. I remember that.”

A corner of Martin’s mouth tucked up into a smug little smile, but he said, “But not since?”

Jon reached for his hand and said, “I’m always glad to be with you.”

“Yes, Jon, I love you too, but I… Well, do you want details? About Mikaele’s place, I mean.”

“Uh. Do you want to tell me specifics?”

“ _Yes_.”

Jon blinked, then squeezed Martin’s hand. “Then I’d love to hear about it.”

“This is _not_ a statement,” Martin said quickly. “I— Actually!” He started grinning and Jon’s stomach jumped.

Martin had a lot of smiles. He had private ones, where it seemed like he had a joke with himself or hadn’t realized he was smiling at something. They were sweet and secretive and scrunched up his eyes and nose in a wonderful way. He had reassuring smiles, tight lying smiles, big people-pleasing smiles, all of which had appeared over the course of his time working at the Institute. He had new smiles for Jon that ranged from unbearably soft (Jon couldn’t look at those for too long without blushing and wanting to cry) to evilly teasing. 

This was a smile that promised Martin was going to torture Jon, the twist of his mouth delighted and wicked. Jon was reminded, as he often was, that he loved Martin so much it nearly hurt.

“Have you ever played Two Truths and A Lie?” Martin said.

“What? N-no? This sounds like a party game.”

“It is, right up there with Ten Fingers and Truth or Dare and Would You Rather,” Martin said.

“You went to a lot of parties growing up?”

“Not many, but a couple sleepovers,” Martin said, waving his free hand to dismiss that topic of conversation. “This one, though… Okay, I’m going to tell you three things that happened at Mikaele’s. One of them is a lie. You have to guess the lie.” He raised his eyebrows significantly and Jon caught the implication—Jon wasn’t allowed to cheat.

“Fine,” Jon scoffed. “This seems unfair, though. You’re good at lying.”

“That’s what makes it fun,” Martin said. When Jon hummed skeptically, he clarified, “For me.”

“Fine. Go ahead, then.”

“Don’t you dare say ‘statement begins,’” Martin warned him.

Jon laughed at that. “You’re going to lie to me, Martin! Of course it’s not a statement.”

“Right. Okay, um… Here, I’ll start with the first day.” Martin held up one finger. “We passed out while Mikaele was playing the piano at us, because he’s a drama queen, and I fell on you.” He held up another finger. “They put us in separate rooms and you freaked out and woke me up by jumping on top of me when you found my room.” A third finger. “You refused to drink or eat anything unless we made it ourselves, and you were _very_ rude when Annabelle made us tea.”

Jon watched Martin very carefully as he listed his three events. Martin kept an eye on the horizon, but he looked back at Jon before he said each statement, and his smile grew with each one until he was biting his bottom lip to keep himself from laughing as he finished.

“Well,” Jon said. “All of those sound ridiculous. The Web making tea?”

“What, you don’t believe the one with you freaking out and diving on me?”

“I’m a grown man, Martin.”

Martin let out a crack of laughter at that. “You’re like a cat! All dignity all the time, and refusing to believe you’re adorable.”

Jon grumbled, but it did make him think. “There’s no way Salesa was playing the piano,” he guessed. “That… that’s _too_ sinister. Martin, why are you laughing at me?”

Martin was giggling so hard he was barely making a sound. “Oh god, you’re right! You’re _wrong_ , that really happened, but you’re right that it was so supervillain!” He caught his breath. “He’s good, though, I’ll give him that. I suppose he’s had time to practice? Anyway, he was really good on the piano, and you were really rude when Annabelle tried to give us tea. Not mean, but just… cold. It was so awkward, you both were just glaring.” He gave Jon one of those impossibly soft smiles. “But they did put us up in the same bed. I didn’t expect so many people to be pro-gay love in the apocalypse.”

Jon had to take a shaky breath in before he could speak—how did Martin make his eyes so comforting and tender and almost glowing?—and then he said, “Well, at least this confirms I didn’t manhandle you.”

Martin raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you think that? Next round.” A finger went up. “We took a bath together.” A second finger. “We shaved each other’s faces.” A third finger. “We danced.” 

Jon felt his face heating as he let out an undignified squeak of surprise. “Good lord. I, uh. Oh. I.”

“Jon? Did I short circuit you?” Martin sounded very pleased with himself.

“In someone else’s house? While the Web was there?” Jon whispered. Public displays of affection had always made him feel a bit uncomfortable, but when there was the possibility of being manipulated… 

“One of ‘em’s a lie,” Martin said. “Which one?”

“I, I don’t know! Dammit, Martin, you’re really too good at this. Hm. Dancing?”

Martin made a noise like the buzzer for a gameshow when a contestant got it wrong. 

“Really? We _did_?” Jon’s voice shot up an octave. He weakly joked, “Was it to Salesa’s piano playing?”

“I thought you said you didn’t remember anything.”

“Wait, really? No! You’re fucking with me.”

Martin tugged at their joined hands and Jon stumbled closer. Martin started humming something waltz-like and gave Jon’s shoulder a nudge with the beat. After a moment, Jon Knew it was Dmitri Shostakovich’s ‘Waltz No. 2.’

“Oh god,” Jon said. “Uh. Were we any good?”

“No!” Martin said happily. “You have _no_ coordination and I don’t know how to waltz. You were trying to watch your feet the whole time.”

“Yes, I was worried that would be the case. Well. Shit.”

“It’s fine, it was just Mikaele. And he was, uh. Well, he was a bit sloshed. Laughed a lot. He’s got a great laugh, you just want to join him.”

“That sounds… acceptable. No Annabelle?”

“Not that I saw. But I was distracted by a very lovely man.” Martin rested his forehead against the top of Jon’s head for a moment and Jon closed his eyes, absorbing the love in that pressure. Then Martin murmured in his ear, “The lie was that we took a bath together, because you insisted it would be like apocalypse soup.”

Jon laughed at himself, at a past moment he couldn’t remember. “Oh god. I agree with myself, though, obviously. Baths are vile.”

“We showered instead,” Martin said.

Jon smiled at that. He pressed a kiss to Martin’s knuckles, which were still clean. The faint smell of lavender soap clung to his hands. Jon said, “More efficient.”

“You can’t fool me that you’re not a romantic. You told me some very sweet things about how nice my bone structure is when you were giving me a shave.” Martin rubbed his chin theatrically. “Didn’t do the best job, we got a bit side-tracked.”

“Good,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t want to waste a minute of that… How long were we there?”

“A week.” Martin was quiet suddenly. His hand tightened on Jon’s, then let go to readjust the strap of his backpack. “You were… You know, I hadn’t realized how bad it was until we got out, but you were really fading there. You knew something was wrong but you kept drifting. Getting confused. Um. You were really in the moment whenever we were together, that was nice. But you never let up on Annabelle. I didn’t either, really. We know her too well. Or, we know the Web a bit too well.”

Jon nodded so he wouldn’t have to look at Martin. “Yes. That… that makes sense. I wish I could recall, Martin, but mostly I’m just glad it happened at all.”

“Yeah, me too. I wrote it down.”

Jon whipped around so fast he staggered in the black muck and nearly fell. “What?”

Martin dropped his hands from where he’d been half-reaching to steady Jon. “I… wrote it down? Just kept a little log of some of the stuff we did and how it felt and all that.”

“Did you do a poem?”

“Why do you say it like that?” Martin asked sharply.

“What? Say what like what?”

“‘Do a poem.’ You told me to do that to prove I was me to Basira. It sounds sort of silly when you phrase it that way.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I don’t mean it’s silly, I just… I don’t really know the process for making poetry. I’ve never written one. The, the ‘slam poem’ things I’ve done for the different domains aren’t really me, just the fear speaking through me. I’m not a writer, Martin. I suppose I’m curious about what you write.”

Martin sighed. “I’ll look it over. See if anything’s worth reading. It was a good way to while away time.”

“I would very much like to read whatever you write,” Jon said. “Especially if it was about a time you were happy.”

“ _We_ were happy,” Martin corrected him.

Jon smiled at him wistfully. “I know, you're right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ep 180 and 181 made me smile so much and also made my heart hurt for these guys. This is such a painfully well-written tragedy horror podcast.
> 
> Also I never stop thinking about Martin 1) being a good liar and 2) teasing Jon without mercy.


End file.
